BHUBANESWAR: Vedanta Limited Lanjigarh has bagged the CSR Award for significant contribution towards women empowerment initiatives through its CSR Project Sakhi in the Lanjigarh region.
Under its livelihood project Aajeevika since 2015, Vedanta has partnered with Mahashakti Foundation, an NGO and started providing intensive system development, requisite trainings on technical assistance and capacity building in order to enhance the institutional and human resource capacities in Lanjigarh block of Kalahandi district, Odisha.
As of now, 176 Self Help Groups have been promoted covering more than 2000 women with a group size of 10-12 members per SHG.
All SHG members have been given training on SHG management practices, leadership and communication development. This has been accompanied with financial literacy training and capacity building of SHG leaders and members. More than 85% of the SHGs have bank accounts with a cumulative savings of Rs 74,51,440 till date.
Currently, 680 women out of total are being supported to start group or individual based farm and non-farm projects. Some income generating activities started are poultry, goatery, dairy, vegetable cultivation, agarbatti making, mushroom cultivation, hill broom making unit, Leaf plate and Cup making unit, applique making, phenyl making, garment stitching, PDS, turmeric processing and selling of NTFP etc.
65 SHGs and 97 individual women have taken up different IGAs and become self-reliant. An all women federation has also been formed – Shaktimayee Foundation with eleven board members as its executive body. The project aims to bring socio-economic improvement in lives of women from 5000 households in the 40 intervened villages by 2020.
In an event organised by Fame India, Delhi at Goa on 24th September, Ranjan Sharma, Head CSR – Odisha Bauxite and Bharat Bhusan Joshi received the award on behalf of the company from D.D. Sharma, Chairman and Nanki Sharma, Director- Fame India, Francisco Sardinha Former-Chief Minister of Goa; JP Aggarwal, Formar MP and President Delhi Pradesh Congress; Jayesh Salgaonkar, Minister of Housing Board – Goa and Vrushali Vivek Parsekar.
